Doing Time

When Your Loved One Is Locked Up on Rikers

Text by Jaime LowePhotographs by Philip MontgomeryJUNE 7, 2018

If it’s a bad morning, her phone won’t ring at all. He might be on lockdown; he might be in trouble; he might be — she doesn’t like to think about what might be happening. She won’t know details until the next call, which can sometimes take days. Today, Tonya Patterson, 44, is still in the king-size bed she used to share with her fiancé, Darius Davis, her head propped up on two pillows against a bejeweled headboard. She’s waking up to an absence, no body lying next to hers. There are no pillows for Davis. Her closet is only half full, and her shoes are stacked to one side, space kept ready for his return.

This morning is an A-L, first-half-of-the-alphabet Saturday, which means she can see Davis at Rikers Island. She visits him three times a week and waits for his calls, and she says the time between their last conversation at 8:50 p.m. and the first in the morning at 5:30 a.m. is the worst. It’s too long; it’s too quiet; it’s too hard not to feel him. He has been away since March, when he was arrested and charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance. His bail was set at $10,000, and she’s trying to raise the money to pay the 10 percent needed for a bond.

She dresses carefully, removing all her jewelry and choosing a bra with no underwire, pants that aren’t too tight and a high-cut neckline. If any piece of her outfit fails inspection, she will be subjected to changing into the dreaded oversize neon-green T-shirt. He hates that shirt, she says. Nothing sexy about it. With “Law & Order” playing in the background on her bedroom TV, she applies dark lip liner and arranges her pink-tipped ponytail. He likes it brighter, but this shade matches her nails. She slips on checkered Vans. She knows by now that the security guards will make her remove her socks, so she goes without. She brings a state-issued ID and little else.

On her way to the Harlem shuttle, she usually picks up a Daily News, buys a fresh three-pack of L-size white tees and makes change at the dollar store so she will have quarters for a locker in the visitation area. Davis tells her to stop bringing new shirts every time — to just wash the ones he has. But she doesn’t want him wearing dingy clothes. Everything’s dingy in jail, baby, he says. Save the money.

She gets on the bus with 18 other women, one man and two newborns. The windows are fogged up from the rain, so Patterson can barely see the river and La Guardia Airport just past the R.F.K. Bridge. She looks down at her phone, playing the game Farm Heroes for most of the ride; sometimes she’ll listen to the Chris Brown station on Pandora. She works full time as a manager in the surgery department at Harlem Hospital and has for 17 years. Her Rikers visits amount to at least eight hours of commuting a week. Each visit takes about four hours — and she gets to see Davis for only one of those hours.

Passengers aboard the free shuttle bus to Rikers Island.Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

They knew each other from around Harlem and through friends, but they became close three years ago after Patterson was the victim of violent domestic abuse at the hands of a former boyfriend. Davis became protective at first, and then his protection drifted into love. Before his last arrest, Davis and Patterson had been living together for a couple of months. They were just getting started on domesticity.

As the bus approaches Rikers, a corrections officer steps on board and gives the usual amnesty announcement: Everyone should leave contraband behind, and there will be no questions asked. Patterson is tired of hearing this speech. She goes through security and a partial strip search — lifting up her shirt and the base of her bra, pulling down the top of her pants. She waits. So much of this is waiting.

Tonya Patterson on the bus to Rikers.Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

Then she sees Davis walk onto the visitor floor, an open space shared with the other women and men visiting inmates and detainees. They get one five-minute hug and hold tight. Then Davis has to go back to his side of a table. He sits across Patterson, separated by a 6-inch-high partition. He tells her about the fight that morning, an argument over sugar and Cheerios. But they’re both most eager to talk about one thing: their wedding. In two days, they’ll stand before a Department of Corrections pastor and exchange vows. She’s nervous about the age difference between them — she’s 19 years older — but he’s not. This is what we want, he tells her. They talk about a bittersweet truth: When they are married, they’ll be joined by the law as well as separated by it. They talk about the moment he gets out: She wants to get a hotel room for at least a month; she never wants to let go. They hold hands over the partition. A guard notices and yells, “Keep your hands on the right side of your partition!”

It’s late in the day; their hour visit extends to an hour and half, until Davis’s name is called. He has to line up behind the gate. He doesn’t look back at Patterson. She once asked why, and he said he never wanted to see her cry. If he looked, that’s what he would see. She gets back on the bus, and he calls within 10 minutes. They talk again for the 15 minutes allotted. With a minute left on their call, a recorded message interrupts to indicate the coming end. I hate that voice, she says, and turns away to whisper a few private words. The last few are: I just want to touch you.

Jaime Lowe is a frequent contributor for the magazine and the author of “Mental.” Philip Montgomery is a photographer who won the 2018 National Magazine Award for feature photography.